How to compress a photo to under 2MB
Updated
Tool for this articleResize & Compress ImageOpen the tool →A photo taken on a recent phone is often several megabytes. When you try to attach one to a job application or an online form, you run into notices like “Attachments must be 2MB or smaller”. Two things decide the size of a photo file: its pixel dimensions (width × height), and how heavily it was compressed when it was saved.
So there are two ways to make it smaller. Lowering the quality a little keeps the dimensions and reduces only the file size. Reducing the dimensions makes the photo look smaller on screen. For an attachment, a long side of around 2,000px is usually enough. Lowering the quality a little first, and reducing the dimensions only if that is not enough, keeps the most quality.
Resize & Compress Image does this for you, in that order. Add a photo and pick a target size (the default is 2MB), and it finds the highest quality that fits the target, then reduces the dimensions little by little if quality alone is not enough. If a JPEG photo is already within the target, it is left untouched and you download the original as it is.
A few things change in the result. With the default settings the result is saved as a JPEG, so a PNG screenshot also becomes a JPEG and transparent areas are filled with white. When the photo is re-saved, photo metadata (EXIF) is not kept in the result, so location information stored in the photo is not carried over. A photo that was left untouched is the original file, so its metadata stays. Leave the original as it is and attach only the downloaded result.
If you set a very low target such as 100KB, the photo can hit the lower limit of 200px on the short side and not reach the target. In that case, raise the target a little or choose smaller dimensions under Options. iPhone photos (HEIC) open only in Safari on an iPhone or a Mac, so for other browsers, save them as JPG from the Photos app first.